Well smile because you're the deer in the headlights
by SignatureDish
Summary: Leah knew she was unlucky, that seemed to be her main characteristic. She was unlucky in love, unlucky in life, and would no doubt be unlucky in death too. So she supposed she had no right to be shocked her soulmate was just as unlucky as she was. Still, getting cursed into the form of a stag was pretty far out there, even by her own standards. The Swan Lake AU nobody asked for.


**Yeah, I don't know where this came from either. I should definitely be working on the next chapter of Perfectly Alien.**

 **But I really wanted to try my hand at a romance, I literally haven't touched the genre since I was like 13. I had two ideas in my head- one of them was a Swan Lake themed romance, which is this one. The problem was none of the fandoms I really like are well-suited for romance. Except maybe HP, but even then I don't like a lot of the canon pairings and AU is basically where I rip things up into frankenstein creations so I like it more.**  
 **So here's my HP AU.**

 **Fair warning- I haven't read the Twilight books in years and I only watch the movies to make fun of them. I'm not a Twilight fan, I just know enough to blend in. So if I get a detail wrong that I didn't do on purpose- like I leaned more on the movies instead of the books for source material on purpose, I welcome corrections.**

 **I'm trying not to bash either, so fear not fans. I mean, there's a reason I chose the saltiest person in the entire series as my protagonist, but I'm not gonna be trashing anyone in particular.**

 **Oh, BTW the timeline is post-Battle of Hogwarts and post-almost Volturi battle.**

* * *

" _Leah, let's go home already! It's late, aren't you tired?"_ Seth whined in her head, trudging several hundred feet behind her. He'd been dragging his paws for a while, walking as if an massive current were sweeping him back to the reserve.

Leah shook her head impatiently. _"Then go, I want to patrol the southern border one more time."_

" _For what?"_ Seth protested. _"Jake already checked over there this morning and the only vampires for miles are the Cullens."_

" _Doesn't matter, I'm already headed over there."_

" _Ugh! Sometimes I think you like being a wolf more than being human!"_

There was a beat of silence where all Leah could hear was the thudding of her heart.

" _...Sorry. I didn't mean it."_ Seth said miserably, all too aware of the things she didn't want to say back.

" _I know. Go back home now."_ She sighed, trying to banish all the painful things that liked to gather in her head when she thought too hard about her life as a werewolf. It was getting better, she could ignore her darkest thoughts more easily now that she was in Jacob's pack. But it didn't make it easy.

So what if being a werewolf cost her the love of her life, might potentially cost her any sense of peace entirely? So what if being the only female werewolf in existence turned her into an outsider even in her own close-knit tribe? She was stronger than her insecurities, she could get past them.

" _Okay. I'll make sure to save some dinner for your."_ Seth acquiesced, drawing a wolf grin to her face at his meekness. Her little brother was so soft, honestly.

" _Hey!"_

" _Don't bother, I don't want Paul to accidentally chew on_ you _instead. I'll catch a few rabbits while I'm out."_

Seth didn't reply, but he may as well have gagged with the disgust pouring through the bond. Very few of the tribe's wolves actually ate what they hunted, though she blamed that mostly on the sheer number of newbies they'd gained over the last year. Raw meat tasted good in their wolf form and it was a little too wasteful for her tastes to leave prey to rot in the forest after she was done playing with it.

Seth's thoughts disappeared from the bond as he shifted back into a human, and Leah was finally alone for the first time in hours.

She gave a leisurely stretch, enjoying the way her claws dug deep scores into the earth. She would never say she preferred being a wolf over being human, but it wasn't all bad.

She began to scent out something interesting to explore along their furthest border.

Forks had been divided up into rather informal territories since Jacob formed their pack, with the Uley pack taking up most of the Quileute reserve and the Black pack claiming the surrounding outskirts while sharing grounds with the Cullens as well. The Cullens' territory remained unchanged despite the intrusion, and Leah thought that they had frankly been far too passive about it. But she supposed that was what happened when an Alpha imprints on the member of your vampire coven.

She could hardly complain, though. She liked where her pack had ended up, the southern border faced nothing but open, unclaimed land. Their furthest corner was the only one to be completely devoid of competition, filled with quiet and pine trees. Not even hikers went so far, it was remote enough that being a werewolf was the only reason she could get there without a truck's worth of gear.

The southern border unnerved Seth, who much preferred to be surrounded by allies, and irritated Jake, who found the trek almost too boring to bother with. But it was Leah's favorite spot.

It felt special, somehow. Tingling with a unique kind of power only the most untouched of places held.

She caught the scent of something strange, just then, tearing her away from her introspection.

It was a bit like an animal, but it smelled both static-y and a little too similar to a pine tree for her to come up with a corresponding creature.

Cautious, Leah hunkered to the ground and stalked quietly past the ferns, ducking behind low bushes and thin trees. She crept closer, an emergency howl coiling in her throat.

She needed to get a good look at the creature before she could head back. The sun had dipped past the mountains and she didn't have much more time left if it meant to attack during the night.

A leaf crunched somewhere up ahead, and Leah froze.

A young stag stepped into view, his slender head carried a short crown of antlers, his long legs were eerily silent shifting off the leaf.

The deer was a little young and scrawny for Leah's preference, but his pretty red coat would make a nice bag or something. A quick sniff told her he was the source of the smell, so it would be killing two birds with one stone bringing back to the tribe anyways.

She snuck closer, ears pricked muscles tensed. The stag hadn't noticed her yet, nosing a patch of grass for a quick nibble.

 _Now!_

Leah leapt from her hiding place, pouncing right for the deer's throat with claws outstretched. She was the size of a pony and made of solid muscle, while a real wolf might need a pack to bring down a deer, she needed only herself.

The stag's soft neck disappeared before she could do more than brush it with her paws.

Leah landed in a crouch, spinning around just in time to see the deer sprinting away at an impressive speed, white tail bobbing in the dark of dusk.

He was headed past the southern border, as if that would stop her.

Leah sprang into action, galloping after her prey. Her heart thudded against her ribs in an addicting wave of excitement, her muscles burned pleasantly as she used all her force to bound ahead of the deer.

She was almost there, right on his heels and edging closer with each step. She was the fasted werewolf in Forks and outrunning a stag was about as hard as outrunning a child.

When she was close enough, Leah lunged in for a bite at his heels, ready to throw him to the ground.

Her teeth clicked audibly around air, the deer had jumped right at that moment, throwing itself past the trees and into a small clearing.

Leah growled in frustration, barrelling after him. He was slippery and swift in ways she didn't see in prey animals, it was throwing her off.

When she found him again the deer was at the center of the clearing, facing her head-on. His black eyes were large, his ears pinned back. But he hadn't lowered his antlers to ward her off, his legs weren't even crouched to spring away. Had it already tired?

Panting lightly, she dug her paws into the soft ground and began her victory charge, aiming for her target with all the sheer ferocity of a bullet.

Then, as if on an unspoken cue, the air charged itself with lightning. The rising charge of the atmosphere prickled her fur and buzzed in her ears. The moon had risen past the mountains, bathing the clearing in unearthly pale light.

Leah skid to a halt, eyes wide. What the hell…

The stag was...shimmering. Like a mirage, the lines of his body quivered insubstantially and fell away as she drew near.

He closed his eyes as fur melted away and smooth skin took its place. All white and wan like the moon that seemed so unnaturally centered in the clearing.

In a few scant seconds, Leah found herself staring a human.

He stood on thin long legs, similar to his counterpart, body poised as if to take flight. His head was tilted toward the sky, hair a mess of dark curls reaching the nape of his neck. He wasn't Native American, never mind of Quileute descent. Were there other kinds of shifters out there?

Leah was stunned mute and dumb as the shifter wobbled and dropped to his knees as though leaving a trance, chest suddenly heaving and cheeks pink from exertion.

A flicker of guilt struck Leah, she'd almost killed a person by mistake.

The guilt was easily squashed when the implications began to dawn of Leah. Why was a shifter intruding in her pack's territory? Where were the others? Was this a trap?

A growl rumbled deep in her chest as she made her way to the kneeling were-...deer? She bared her teeth threateningly and watched the human for any sign of ill intent.

The former stag picked up his head, light eyes finding hers in the dark. An uneasy smile pulled at his lips as he watched her right back. It was a bit hard to see, his features were largely shadowed by the cast of the moon.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." His voice was barely above a whisper, oddly hoarse for his appearance. He had an outlandish accent too, a little English and a little Scottish and entirely alien to Forks.

Leah bristled, giving a dangerous snap of her fangs before shifting back to her human form to speak with the presumptuous intruder.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" She demanded flatly, the wolfish snarl still pulling at her human lips.

Perplexingly, the intruder stiffened from his tired slump and cast his face away from her immediately, fists clenched.

Leah watched uncomprehendingly as the other began to stammer out. "U-um, sorry! I didn't realize you didn't- Do you have any- Put this on!" And he began shrugging out of his cloak.

That's when she realized the other shifter was fully clothed. Not for a moment had he been undressed during his transformation, another oddity. Was he really a shifter?

Her snarl faded as a tinge of amusement touched her ice, he certainly wasn't used to nudity. Even in the dark, she could spy his glowing red face as he looked everywhere but in her direction.

Leah accepted the offered cloak, oddly old-fashioned and closer to a robe than a coat. While it was fitted on his spindly build, Leah found the sleeves to be uncomfortably tight around her biceps and there wasn't enough material to close around her full chest.

She wasn't self-conscious about it, though. It was nigh impossible to maintain the same sensibilities after nearly doubling in mass in the span of a week and undergoing public nudity almost daily. It was an unexpected perk, especially when she got to see the deep discomfort of outsiders such as this one.

Oh well, back to business. He still hadn't answered any of her questions, and they were only piling up the longer she looked at him. Honestly, what was he wearing?

"Start talking. Now." She demanded, crouching over the intruder threateningly. He still hadn't moved from his position in the grass for all that he was deeply mortified by her state of dress.

"R-right. Well, my name is Harry. Are these your woods? I've been here for a while and you're the first person I've seen." Leah snorted disbelievingly. Harry was a dumb name, too. Probably fake.

"As if you don't know there's two packs and a coven in Forks. No one just _accidentally_ ends up in this tiny little town. Try again." She growled.

'Harry' frowned in confusion, peering over her shoulder as though he would see the packs she was talking about.

"Are there really? I suppose that's why I'm here of all places." He hummed a little darkly, eyes flicking back to her face with a new edge. She readjusted her weight, ready for anything.

"You're right, I'm not here by accident. I was put here as a punishment, the backstabbing bastards." Vitriol was practically oozing from his final words, a little misplaced given his coarse and whispery tone.

Leah narrowed her eyes, Jake would definitely need to know if people were _sending_ strange shifters to them. Was this going to be another vampire army?

"You mean someone took you to Quileute land? For what purpose?"

Harry shrugged a little sullenly. "The Ministry put me in this clearing, it's special I suppose. I really don't know why, and I don't care either."

Leah looked around the clearing for any marker that made it stand out to outsiders. It was really just a round clearing, filled with tall grass and clovers. It was pretty, to be sure, but nothing to write home about.

Harry huffed when he saw her expression. "Yeah, I'm not sure what's so important that even Unspeakables in London know about this place, but here I am."

"What are Unspeakables?" She asked.

Harry tilted his head a little. "Do you call them something else here? They're Ministry employees who work in the Department of Mysteries."

Was this guy pulling her leg? Maybe deer shifters were loons. "What Ministry? I've never heard of a department like that."

Now Harry looked seriously confused. "I thought Americans had a Ministry. It's the wizarding government in the UK."

Did he just say 'wizarding'? Leah took in a deep breath. She couldn't smell any others like him nearby, was this some sort of distraction?

"What are you playing at?" She snapped. "Are you just crazy? Just tell me why you're here! Are there more of you?"

Harry scowled. "I'm not playing at anything! The Ministry of Magic put me here two weeks ago, I'm not trying to attack you or whatever. And I'm the only one here."

"What the _hell_ is a Ministry of Magic?"

"Are you a witch or not?" He asked hotly. "Don't tell me you don't know about magic when you're a bloody animagus!"

Leah drew up short. He seemed to believe what he was saying, all the way up to being irritated at having to explain himself. Was he really just crazy? Maybe she should dump him on Billy and be done with it, the Elders might know what to do.

He seemed to read what was going through her head, slumping bonelessly on the ground with a groan. "You turn into a damned wolf!" He shouted almost indignantly. "How do you not believe in magic?"

"I know that's magic!" She barked, rolling her eyes. "But that doesn't make me a _witch_. Screw you!"

"No, not like that." Harry shook his head again. He lifted a hand in front of his face, palm open as though to catch something from the sky. "Witches and wizards are people who can do magic. Like this- _Lumos!_ "

And his palm lit with white starlight, shining like a beacon in the night. It rivaled the moon in lighting the clearing, clearly illuminating his face in the process. Leah had only glanced for a second, much more alarmed by the light right up until she accidentally made eye-contact.

 _She'd never seen eyes so green._

Leah suddenly felt too hot, feverish and tight. Her body felt too small to hold her spirit, her hold on humanity as tremulous as her first time shifting. All the atoms that made up her form seemed to vibrate at once, threatening to come loose. Leah let out an audible gasp and stumbled back.

 _Too far_ , her whole body cried out. Every step away _pulled_ like she was leaving a piece of herself behind, and in a way she was.

"H-hey, are you okay? Can you breathe?"

She hadn't realized she'd closed her eyes until she opened them again and found Harry staring at her in concern. The light was gone and it was hard to see his green, green eyes in the dark. She mourned the loss deeply.

He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, face soft. "Are you okay?"

Leah grabbed his wrist before she could stop herself, dying to tug him closer. The very touch was sunlight against her skin, warming her down to her bones.

 _So this was imprinting_.

She'd known it was intense, she had been in the heads of wolves who've gone through imprinting themselves, unfortunately. But it hadn't really connected how all-encompassing it was...It was like going to a concert after only knowing music through a crappy phone speaker.

Looking at this weird, foreign shifter with a dumb name, she'd found her other half.

 _I found my heart_ , was all she wanted to sing.

"Shit you're cold!" She blurted instead, face burning, skin squirming. How did Sam deal with this, she felt like she was going to explode. Her entire world had just condensed itself into a single person, and every centimeter away he stood felt like a foot too far into the sky, like she was drifting in his gravity and would be forever off-balance until she was pressed into him completely.

"Your hand is like ice, seriously. Why are you so cold?"

Harry frowned and tugged his hand away, it was very nearly unbearable to release his wrist. "Of course I'm cold. I'm in the middle of Washington at night with only my shirt and trousers on. Why are _you_ so hot?"

Leah yanked the ugly cloak off her shoulders and forcefully began tugging it back on her imprintee. _Her imprintee_. "I thought you were like me, shifters run warm." She explained shortly, looping his arms into the sleeves and forcing it shut around his chest. He was really thin now that she was up close, was that a deer-shifter thing too?

"I-I can put my own cloak on!" He squeaked, waving his hands everywhere making it _much_ harder to put the cloak on properly, head darting around like a bird to avoid looking at her uncovered chest.

Leah fought down any surge of self-consciousness about her nudity. She was young and in great shape and would _not_ feel bad about her body, even in front of her apparent soulmate.

"Then do it already! If you don't run hot like a shifter you can get really sick after dark!" She huffed, letting him manage the cloak but definitely not stepping out of his space.

The obsessive hovering had creeped her out when she'd seen some of her pack moon over their imprintees, but now she'd found that there wasn't a single cell within her that was willing to move away of her own accord.

"I've been out here for a while now, I have ways of keeping warm since I'm a wizard." Harry grumbled, straightening his cloak and glancing at her with what might be nervousness.

"And...you're a witch, right? Or whatever you call people with magic."

"I'm not whatever you are." She refuted immediately. Leah had never seen someone conjure a ball of light or call themselves a _wizard_. "I'm a werewolf. My tribe has the ability to become werewolves given the...right circumstances."

It was a little weird immediately telling Harry what she was. There wasn't a strict protocol to imprinting or anything, but the general consensus was to save the werewolf reveal for later. But Harry was a shifter too, at least something like it. He was just as new and unique as she was.

It was comforting to know that there was a perfect match even for a werewolf outsider.

Harry hummed interestedly. "I don't think you're a werewolf, but I've never heard of a group of people who were just animagi, I wonder how that works."

Leah bristled. "Are you calling me a liar? What do _you_ call people who turn into wolves?"

Harry actually laughed, which was both incredibly infuriating and infuriatingly incredible. "No, I mean I know actual werewolves. They only turn when the moon is full and they don't have any control for the entire shift. You don't look like a werewolf, you look like a big wolf. And you can change at will, which is basically what an animagus is." He explained.

So Harry wasn't a shifter? So Leah wasn't a werewolf? She still wasn't sure if he was just powerful and crazy, but she would humor her imprintee.

"So you're an animagus who turns into a deer?"

His whole countenance darkened and she struggled to hold in her cry of dismay, what had she done to hurt her imprintee already?

"I...I guess I am. I wasn't an animagus before the Ministry sent me here, but the curse they used is supposed to use my animagus form...So I suppose I could've been a deer." He looked down at his feet, which she wasn't actually sure he could see in the dark of night.

Wait, what did he say?

"You were cursed?" She growled, temper boiling and hot with the suddenness of an eruption. "How?"

Harry looked back at her. "Some ritual, I don't know the specifics. It's an old punishment the Ministry used when killing war prisoners was too inconvenient, I think. What with inheritance and leverage and all that. That's what Malfoy said."

This ministry, if it was actually real, was definitely on her shit list. "Does it hurt you?"

Harry shrugged with a horribly ambiguous grin. "Not really, I think I'll die of boredom before anything else, honestly."

 _Die, die, die, die, die, die-_

"You won't die." She ground out, and grabbed his wrist, pulling him away from the moon-washed clearing. "Come on, we'll figure this out with my pack."

"Woah, wait!" Harry dug in his heels, which did nothing in actually forcing her to stop, but Leah slowed anyway.  
"I can't leave the clearing." He blurted, already leaning away, back to where they came from.

Leah arched an eyebrow skeptically, Harry had gone a lot further into her territory than this while he had been a stag.

He ran a hand through his shag of curls. "I can't leave for more than a day, the curse recharges at night. I need to be here for that to happen or it'll mess me up."  
Alarm set her hair on end. "Mess you up how?"

"Well, I'm not clear on the specifics but it takes power for the curse to keep me as a stag, and _I'm_ the battery. It'll be a serious toll on my energy levels if the curse expends too much power keeping me as a stag and funneling my magic at the same time. If I can't turn back by being in the clearing at night then it could knock me flat for days or get me really sick."

Leah stared. "Drain your- you mean you can't control when you shift? Didn't you just say that's what an animagus is supposed to be able to do?"

Harry sighed. "It's part of the curse, okay? Turns me into a deer by day to keep me from getting help, turns me back into a human at night so I can't go anywhere."

Leah felt a growl rumbling in her chest, her skin felt thin and flimsy, like she could burst into her wolf form at any second. Of course her imprintee is the subject of a bizarre curse that turns him into a deer, of course! Because when was life ever easy?

So she couldn't take him to her tribe right now without potentially hurting him, Seth was probably worried at how long she was taking and she couldn't bring anything to show for it. He would have to stay in a quiet, freezing clearing without anything but an ugly cloak to protect him from the elements while some curse was making him woozy. What if he fell and hit his head? What if he froze to death? What if it rained or snowed? Just because it was summer didn't mean Forks' notoriously bad weather got any better. It was so dangerous out in the woods when you weren't a werewolf.

"U-um, could you- do you mind-" Harry stuttered and Leah glanced over to find him twisting awkwardly away from the way she had been absently stroking his wrist.

"Ah, sorry." She grunted, forcefully peeling her fingers away from his cold flesh. He was already much too cold.

"Y-you know," He began, rubbing where she had been touching his wrist. Did he feel their connection too? Emily had told her she only ever felt complete around Sam. Well, not _told_. Emily would never willingly say that in front of Leah. But she'd said it to Sam and Sam couldn't help thinking back on her words with glowing love every now and then when he forgot Leah could hear his thoughts.

She was _so_ glad she was out of his pack now.

"I can still go pretty far by day. The clearing doesn't drain me when I'm a deer. Maybe we could meet up tomorrow instead?

Leah couldn't bite back a snort of amusement. As if she was going to _leave_ her scrawny imprintee alone in the woods with a goddamned _curse_ hanging over his head. She had just gotten something she'd never really thought she could have, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell she was gonna risk losing it for something as trivial as a bed.

"Oh, um. Right, it would be pretty dumb to hang out with a deer, I guess." Harry mumbled dejectedly. He dropped his hands and went to face the clearing instead of her. "It's not like I can talk or anything."

Leah blinked for a moment, confused at the behavior. Why was he suddenly so dejected? All she'd said was- oh. She rolled her eyes and slung an arm across his shoulders. He was actually fairly tall now that she was standing next to him, maybe her height exactly.

"I'm not leaving, doofus. Someone's gotta make sure you don't freeze to death out here. I'll bring you to the tribe in the morning, the Elders might have a solution."

"Wait, what?"

Instead of wasting time explaining it to her rather dense imprintee, she simply recaptured his wrist and turned them right around, marching back into the unnervingly lit clearing.

She arbitrarily picked a spot and flattened the ferns into a thin, scratchy mattress to keep them even the slightest bit above the ground. Honestly, Harry was lucky he had survived for as long as he had, smarter hikers had died with more equipment.

"Wait, what!" Harry's voice suddenly sharpened, alarmed. It seemed he'd finally puzzled out her intention.

"No, no! You can't stay the night! You should go back to your house, I won't make you sleep out in the woods!"  
Leah plopped down onto the ferns, waving away a few moths as she gave Harry's arm a quick jerk. "Hey, you can't _make_ me do anything. Now sit down already."

"I-I didn't mean it like that!" Harry protested, fighting her hold as if his skinny wrists were any match for her supernatural strength. "But you should definitely go home. It's not like I can go anywhere and I'll be fine, so there's no point on staying."

She finally yanked him off balance and he tumbled into the ferns headfirst with a startled shriek. Leah hid a wince, he had fallen a bit harder than she intended, probably too used to wrestling with her packmates.

"Come on, you're pathetic. If I don't stay I'll be amazed if you last the night." She jeered awkwardly, using contrastingly gentle hands to set him back upright and pull weeds from his tangle of hair.

The line of Harry's shoulders tensed. "I'm not pathetic. I told you I've survived for weeks now and I can help myself using magic. This isn't the first time I've been in the woods." His voice was icy cold.

Leah dug her nails into the meat of her calf, she had pissed him off now. She didn't think before she said that and now he didn't like her.

Having an imprintee was intense, as soon as she comprehended the situation a frigid spike was slammed through her heart while the rest of her body thrummed with panicky adrenalin. It was a lot more emotion than she was used to dealing with on a minute-to-minute basis, regardless of Seth's opinions on her 'brooding'.

"I-I don't think you're pathetic." She backtracked. "But I mean- come on! You don't even have a tent! I had a great uncle who thought he didn't need a tent in the summertime and he ended up having to go to the hospital for frostbite."

Harry grumbled grudgingly, but thankfully dropped some of the animosity. "I already told you, I can use _magic_. See?"

He waved his hand over her face and his lips moved, though she didn't hear any words. Leah watched warily. She wanted to trust that her imprintee didn't mean her any harm, but she wasn't sure what he intended to do.

Suddenly, a wave of heat crashed over her, as if she had been dropped in front of the crackling fireplace. She let her eyes fall shut with a sigh, naturally high body temperature or not that felt good.

A weight pressed against her shoulder, making her eyes fly open. She looked down to find Harry teetering into her with a drunken wobble. He didn't seem to be aware of how dangerously close his face was to her breasts, hopefully the distraction would include the pink high on her cheeks as well.

"Harry?"

He pulled himself away with a sigh, chin falling to his chest. "Sorry, that tired me out. 'M running on empty."

Agitation fluttering in her heart like a butterfly, the curse was doing this to him?

She steered him down to the ground, rolling him on his back so he wouldn't do something dumb like hit his head on a rock. "You shouldn't have done that then, didn't I just say I wasn't cold?"

Harry peered thoughtfully up at her. "You're being...really nice to a stranger. Especially one you think is trying to attack your family or something."

Leah startled momentarily, then looked away. "Yeah well, I don't think that anymore. You're way too unprepared to have been sent here to mess with us." She decided she'd save the soulmate reveal for some other time, it definitely wasn't the kind of bomb to drop within the first hour of meeting someone unless you were trying to run them off. And so far, Leah had no intention of running Harry off.

Harry hummed, wrapping his arms around his middle to conserve heat. "Still really nice."

He looked up at her, green eyes appearing silver in the moonlight. "You know, you never told me your name."

This time, Leah couldn't hide how her whole body flushed. Her imprintee still didn't even know her _name_ , how pathetic. They'd already been talking for a solid twenty minutes, wherein the fact that she turned into a wolf was discussed, and she still never thought to introduce herself. That was Seth-levels of screw up.

"L-Leah Clearwater." She coughed awkwardly.

Harry hummed. "Leah, huh? That's a really pretty name."

The fiery heat on her face intensified, she looked resolutely away and willed herself to calm down. "Yeah, sure."

Harry furrowed his brow. "Are- are you blushing?"

"Shut up and go to sleep." She snapped.

It seemed her soulmate was not only dense, but stubborn too, for he didn't even bother hiding his open eyes as he stared right back at her, teasing grin sliding on his face.

As punishment, Leah shifted back into a wolf and flattened Harry to the ground with her weight, holding just a bit on her haunches to keep from actually crushing him but letting the rest squish him into the ferns. He spluttered and squirmed in a strangely ticklish way, so she gave a disapproving huff and rolled a bit to pin his legs too.

"You're _heavy_!" Harry wheezed, but she could feel his body relaxing beneath her. She hoped he couldn't feel how hard her heart thumped at the contact, so close to her imprintee it was like dipping into a sauna after years in the arctic. She was relaxing too, mirroring his movement.

After a few minutes of basking silence, Harry wriggled again.

A hand gently began to card through the shaggy silver fur on her side, almost too light to feel but steady against her skin. Leah shut her eyes with a sigh, she didn't know how she could miss something so badly when she'd never felt it before.

Leah didn't know how she had managed for so long when she had clearly been missing half her heart the entire time.

"You're warm." Harry murmured groggily.

Leah woofed softly and lowered her head beside Harry's own, secretly soaking in his scent while they drifted off to sleep. He smelled like he had as a deer, more electricity and pine wood than anything else, as far from a living creature as it could get. She won't lie, it was a bit disconcerting. But she could adapt for her soulmate, and with luck he wouldn't notice if she made him smell more like tribe than an outsider had any right to.

Casting those thoughts away, she let herself fall into lethargy and darkness. It wasn't long before she drifted off under the careful attention of herimprintee, one of the best ways she could possibly imagine going to sleep.

* * *

 **And that's a wrap! I'm half-tempted to leave this as a one-shot, tbh. Does anyone really care if this gets continued? Please leave a review, I'm listening in.**

 **I've got a sketch going over where this heads, but there are tons of Leah-meets-a-guy fics out there so would anyone be interested in mine? I don't know, I'm not very confident in this. But that could just be because this is the first time I've ever published a romance.**

 **Please tell me what you think and any tips! I have some plot bunnies I've been holding for years because I'm not sure how to write a compelling romance.**

 **On another note- yeah, the swan is a stag. I couldn't justify making Harry into a beautiful swan just for aesthetic, he's more of a deer. Easy to overlook physically but a secret killing machine, you know? Deer are dangerous.**


End file.
